Hazelnuts and Walnuts

Out two hazelnut bushes produced well this year and I beat the squirrels to the nuts! I think deer have also taken the nuts in the past so the fact that the hazelnut bushes are now fenced in helps with that. I harvested about a month ago. Left the nuts to dry out in a warm dry place for a few weeks and then when I saw that some nuts were falling free from their pods I knew they were cured and I could remove all the nuts from their coverings. It seems like a lot of work for just a few pounds of small nuts but they are organic and from our own bushes. Can't do much better than that. We may add more hazelnut bushes next year.

Hazelnut bush. I believe it's 4 years old, they grow fast.

Hazelnuts ready to harvest.

I harvest as late as possible but before they are fully ripe so as to beat the wildlife.

KitKat of course helps.

A few weeks later the hazelnuts are dried out and ready for husking and eating.

many nuts had fallen right out of their husks but some needed taking out.

Most de-hulled now. 

The hazelnuts look like toys to Linnea!

Walnuts on the other hand...our harvest was not so big...three nuts. Haha. BUT this is the first year we got nuts from our two English Walnut trees so this was very exciting indeed! Hopefully the trees will continue to have good growth and many more walnuts will grow next year. The trees are only a few years old so this is pretty good. The walnut I tasted was delicious. The English Walnut trees are a bit away from other gardens and trees since their roots can produce a substance that can cause other plants to fail. The walnut trees could be accessed by wildlife but nothing found our tiny crop of walnuts this year. Having said that I believe their were FIVE little nuts at the start so maybe two were taken early on. More likely they dropped off the trees very early. One walnut fell off the tree a couple weeks ago and I found it. Then the last two we waited until the were starting to go just a bit brown.

Walnut tree approx. 3 years old. 

A walnut about ready to harvest

One of the English Walnut trees. 

Two walnuts.

I tried one, it was very  good!

Another nut tree we could try planting would be chestnuts either a hybrid or Chinese. There have supposedly been American chestnut trees on our road that hadn't yet succumbed to the great chestnut blight. At times I have looked in our woods to see if I can spot one but I have never found one. I have found beechnut trees but the wildlife always beats me to those nuts and they are so tiny not worth the effort.

That is our nut harvest for this year done.